MANILA, APRIL 1, 2013 – No one can forget the explosion of the Department of Tourism’s (DoT) ‘It’s More Fun in the Philippines’ campaign during the first quarter of 2012. The memes that Filipinos came up with to support the campaign barraged social networking sites resulting in a perfect display of the Filipino’s wit and creativity.
Headed by top advertising executive-turned-tourism secretary Ramon “Mon” Jimenez Jr. tourism in the Philippines has a noticeable string of success under his 578 days in office.
Headlines last year told of the Philippine economy’s sudden rise, driven primarily by the businesses sector – BPO, tourism, and wellness activities, rebounding 7.6 percent. But how does the DoT do it? adobo magazine sat down with Jimenez to talk about the fine points of managing a country’s brand.
“[Managing the country’s brand] is a lot like the Chinese’s balancing plates act. We have to keep the plates spinning,” Jimenez said. “Despite the tragedies that have befallen the country – from Sendong to Sabah – the Philippines’ brand is still up there. This is because we’re finally attending to it.
“Before, whatever went on the news was our image. We never really propagated our image; we didn’t have a brand. Now we can regulate it because the world knows it is the best of this and that,” Jimenez added, referring to the effective image recall the ‘It’s More Fun’ campaign generated. “Now even CNN is very careful about us because we’re an advertiser,” he said with a laugh.
Another way that Jimenez handles the country’s imaging is to allow the Filipino people to grab a hold of the brand and own it. It is when people realize this that projects come about. An example of this is Illuminate Digital Media Inc.’s (IDMI) digital information kiosks, with the Memorandum of Agreement signed just last week, that aim to make travelling around the Philippines easier for foreign and domestic tourists alike. The effort wasn’t forced by the DoT, it came naturally out of a desire to help further the campaign and help the Philippines at the same time.
In 2011, the press was endeared to the then newly-appointed tourism secretary for saying that the Philippines is already a great product and that it should be easy to sell like Chickenjoy. “To be fair, we’re a gorgeous – talagang drop dead gorgeous – country. I recently visited Dumaguete City and [the tour guides] brought me up to the mountains. It broke my back,” he said, laughing. “But the Sibulan Twin Lakes – two lakes on top of a mountain and are separated by 200 million years! – was beautiful. It was so majestic that I had to tell the tour guides to keep quiet for a bit. I just had to take in the place’s glory.”
Philippine soft powers
The Philippines can be known for a lot more than the world gives the Filipino people credit for. Jimenez mentions the Filipino influence in almost every household and hospital, including music, the Filipino brand is stamped all over the world. “The Philippines has actually a lot of soft powers than we realize. It exerts influence in ways that have not yet been calculated. But it’s all only subtle, not as overt as the world sometimes would have it,” Jimenez said, commenting on the country’s propensity for soft powers, a term coined in the 1990s , describing a country’s ability to attract and co-opt rather than coerce, use force or give money as a means of persuasion.
“[But] what’s our problem? Our problem is that this is all happening accidentally. We’re not yet on purpose. A lot of our influence is a result of expediency and need. But that’s no different than the soft powers of African music. The world learned the blues because black people became slaves centuries ago. But they continue to exert power today,” Jimenez said. “All we have to do is exert power on it. The African-American people got a handle on it; they’re finally getting paid for singing the blues. We’re not getting paid properly yet for raising someone’s kids. But we can transform that into something ownable.
“We are already the proven business solution in IPO, BPO, the medical care industry, so many other areas. It’s just that we’ve got to put our name on it,” he added.
In the end, Jimenez goes back to the original statement he made upon accepting the role in 2011: “Tourism is the people’s business.” And with 1,000+ days to go, Jimenez is still following through with this goal.
